By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
EDGEWOOD, NM — The Edgewood Police Department has already seen its share of turbulence and is showing signs of additional troubles.
On Jan. 3, Edgewood police Officer Hellen Gonzalez filed a lawsuit is Santa Fe’s state District Court against Police Chief James Daniels and the Edgewood Town Council alleging sexual discrimination.
According to the complaint, Gonzalez sustained an injury on the job, which she had surgically repaired around early May. She requested to be put on light duty in the department, but was refused, according to the document.
The document also accuses Daniels of threatening Gonzalez seniority, even though Gonzalez was one of the first officers hired by the newly formed Police Department in the summer 2008.
She has served under three different police chiefs in about as many years, which explains some of the rough patches with the department, according to Town Administrator Karen Mahalick.
“That would be expected with three chiefs in three years and a new town,” she said.
The town went through a few other changes around the time Gonzalez was sworn in. Mayor Robert Stearley, who had only recently been elected, had recently removed Town Administrator Jeff Condrey. He then appointed Martin Hibbs, who was the mayor of Estancia at the time, to replace Condrey, but the choice was rejected unanimously by the Town Council.
After that, current Clerk/ Treasurer Estefanie Muller headed the town administration for a time, and it wasn’t until 2009 that Mahalick filled the position.
In February 2009, the town’s first police chief, Paul Welch, resigned in a cloud of controversy and was replaced by Charles Swanberg, who served for about a year as an interim chief before being replaced by Daniels around the end of 2009.
Since then, the Police Department unionized, and Daniels is now being accused of sexual discrimination by his department’s only female police officer.
Part of the lawsuit alleges Daniels told Gonzalez she could be replaced if she was away from her job for longer than six months, according to the document.
Another part of the document states that Gonzalez was treated differently than a male police officer who was also injured.
The male off icer was allowed to do police work, the lawsuit states.
When asked about the nature of the work the male officer did, Mahalick said he had worked in the town’s Planning Department doing code enforcement, which is different from working in the Police Department.
Mahalick added that it is up to Daniels to run his department, and he said there was no light duty work to be done.
But that wasn’t the case for a little less than a week around the end of August, according to Gonzalez’s complaint.
In August, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission contacted the town in the course of an investigation into a complaint made by Gonzalez, according to the lawsuit. Soon after that, Gonzalez was given several half-day, light duty assignments within the Police Department, the complaint states.
After less than a week, however, she was assigned to do receptionist work at the Edgewood town offices. When asked whether the allegation is that the short period of police work was designed to quash the investigation, Gonzalez’s attorney Rachel Higgins would only say: “The timing is very suggestive.”
Something not included in the lawsuit are two complaints from within the Police Department made against Gonzalez, Higgins said.
So far, the town of Edgewood and Gonzalez’s attorney have refused to release much information about the complaints, but according to Higgins, two of the complaints that have been investigated were found to be without merit.
Those could be attached to the lawsuit in the future, she said.
“The claims that are likely to be joined with the lawsuit that’s already been filed will create a much fuller picture,” Higgins said.
She added that sharing the contents of those complaints could jeopardize her client’s employment, and what Gonzalez wants is to be allowed to do police work in Edgewood.
What Gonzalez has been doing, among other things, is working as an assistant in the Edgewood Community Library filing books, according to the lawsuit.
Copyright 2011 Albuquerque Journal